The gennies were grinding. It wasn’t bad yet,
but they had been buzzing thirty minutes ago and in another thirty, the
Dockship Sitting Bull would be no more. After about an hour of solid grind, one
of the blades that turned in the massive gravity generators would snap under
the pressure and send itself flying through the hull of the generator, the
generator room and probably the hull of the ship itself.

Chloe didn’t hear the grinding. Chloe was well
immersed in the newest book she had gotten just this morning. It had been
morning for her, anyway, as that was the just before her shift began. The
newest book was Stephen King’s Dark Tower III. Since the ban had been lifted on
print books three years ago, she had been consuming any and all fiction she
could. Her roommate Tanya chided her about wasting time with fiction, saying it
was never a worthwhile endeavor to read lies. Chloe knew different. There were
times when truth peaked out at you between the black letters on the synthetic
paper.

Plink! A shard of metal embedded itself
into the railing of the G.O.D. The generator observation deck was really
nothing more than a raised platform with mesh steel grating. There was a
terminal on one wall, a card table in the middle and two chairs. There was
never any more than one person here at a time, but somebody had put the extra
chair there for a reason, long before Chloe was assigned genny duty.

Chloe put the book down on the card table and
walked to the railing. It was only a three-inch portion and that was still
considered safe. Four inches or above and you had to report it. Assuming that
four inches didn’t ream out the back of your skull that is. Chloe slid down the
ladder to the generator floor. The real reason for the G.O.D. was simply that
the floor around the generator room was constantly vibrating and you couldn’t
stand on it for more than a half hour without getting sick. Chloe’s shifts were
twelve hours long and sometimes with two meals served. If she had to sit on the
floor of the generator deck, she’d lose half her body weight before she was
reassigned.

Chloe walked to the end and looked up at Old
Chuck. He was the oldest genny they had and he still chugged along, day in and
day out. He had had all his blades replaced more than twice and each blade
wasn’t due to be replaced until it hit the fifty earth year mark. Old Chuck was
older than her grandfather and was probably going to outlive her. She had no
doubt it was one of his blades that had spit at her, but she didn’t fault him
for it.

Chloe walked to the grease tank and grabbed the
hose. She had greased Old Chuck twice in the last three days and that was bad.
The three other gennies hadn’t been greased in a week and here was Old Chuck,
wheezing and begging for some of his juice; just something to take the pain
away.

Chloe shoved the four inch wide hose into the
receptacle and thumbed the ‘deposit’ button. Three hundred gallons of
Molybdenum in a little under three seconds. Old Chuck stopped his whining and
sounded just as young as the other three. Chloe had named the newest of the
gennies, Dora. The second newest was Jimbo and the third newest was, aptly,
Jenny. Old Chuck was older than all of them and was, in fact, one of the first gennies
ever made.

It wasn’t so much the materials that made the
gravity generators work so well or the concept, but more the combination of the
right materials and the right design and the host of a billion
other x-factors that couldn’t have been repeated had it not been for the keen
notes of a man named Jacob Glasskey.

Glasskey was a physicist first and foremost, but
energy was his hobby. In the late 21st, Glasskey had been toying
around with new fuel sources for the existing plasma ships. They burned plasma
and used it to power every single device on every single ship from the lowliest
Mosquito class scouts to the Raptor class battle cruisers. They all had the
same engine, the same mechanics and the same rate of burn per metric ton. The
problem wasn’t that they weren’t fast and the problem wasn’t making plasma. The
problem was producing enough plasma to send those boys on long trips and them
having enough fuel to come back on. Glasskey had tackled this problem with the
way any good physicist would. In 2084, he patented the first gravity current
generator.

The grav genny could sit inside the
gravitational field of a planet or a major satellite and use the currents of
gravity to turn the massive turbines inside the generators. He designed the
units with nickel core iron blades to react best to the gravity and shaped the
blades to turn under the least amount of gravity possible. Even if Sitting Bull
was dead still, she could produce enough power to get her the short trip to and
from Earth. But as it was, like with all other Dockships, she rode the thin
line of gravitational pull between the Earth and the moon, using the pressure
of each to produce more than sufficient electricity which can be converted and
scaled into the massive amounts of plasma that powered the largest battleships.

Chloe put the grease hose back onto the hook and
walked back to the ladder. When she got to the top, she found that her shift
was over. She had read through most of it and hence, her twelve hours was done.
This was reason alone for fiction. Chloe picked her book up and opened the
reinforced door to the G.O.D. area. From there she stepped on the conveyer belt
and watched as her three counterparts did the same. There were four genny rooms
and four gennies in each room. The ship could run on a single genny and could
produce more than enough plasma given the optimal set of circumstances. Tanya
was first in the line of observers going off shift. Behind Tanya was Michael
Wilson, a new guy. As Chloe watched, he absently scratched at his behind. He
looked exhausted and that was likely the case with the current circumstances.
He had pulled a double and was now running on less than two hours sleep in the
last twenty-four. Behind Chloe was Hector, the seasoned veteran observer.

“I heard Old Chuck whining in there. He spit
any?” Hector asked. Hector was by far Chloe’s favorite person on board. He knew
how to do nearly every job on board and was well able to do every job if he
needed to. Chloe had heard that he had been part of the original crew of
Sitting Bull and had fallen in love with the ship. Chloe couldn’t relate these
days, but Hector had seen the ship when she was shiny and new. Chloe smiled at
the thought of Hector, his silver hair and silver handlebar mustache. If he
wasn’t old enough to be her grandfather, Chloe might have considered him for a
duty-mate. Tanya stepped off the end of the conveyer where Mosquito Jim was
waiting on her. Mosquito Jim was one of four fuel pilots onboard the Bull.
Their unenviable duty was to pilot the refueling hose out to the waiting ships
and dock. If he messed up, ever, it wouldn’t just be his own ass he’d have
messed up. Mosquito was a good guy though, named for the Mosquito scouts he
used to pilot when the solar system was still considered uninhabited. Tanya
liked him well enough and after all, he was her duty-mate. Duty-mates
were encouraged aboard duties that ran longer than an Earth-year. No kids,
obviously, but the government made that pretty clear with the implants. They
did seem to have a handle on the idea that the crew would engage in copulating
despite the rules. It was always better when the government rolled with the
ideas rather than against them.

The errant butt-scratcher stepped off the belt
and headed off to the barracks. Chloe stepped off herself and walked into the
common area. This was the meeting place of the Bull; every section started or
ended from here depending on your duty assignment. They had just gotten off
generator observation. The portal to Chloe’s right went off to the barracks.
The next in counterclockwise fashion went off to the fuel pilot’s staging area.
The next portal was to the commissary and the one next to it was the portal for
the ships computers and the actual deck of the ship. The final and largest of
the portals went deep into the guts of the ship for plasma storage and the
engines. The common area had a few tables set up to lounge about and a few old,
ratty and yet comfortable chairs.

Chloe sat down in one and opened her book. In a
little while she’d go get something to eat and after that she’d probably head
off to bed, but right now, a hero named Eddie was helping a kid named Jake
cross worlds in her book. Paper, even the cheap synthetic crap, was slow to
produce. Chloe had one real paper book in her room for smell alone. She loved
the binding glue they used and could all but sleep with a book over her face.

On the one couch in the common area, Tanya had
sat down next to Jim. He had one hand inside her shirt and was obviously
unashamed of what he was doing there. Chloe sighed and tried to bury herself in
the book. Before she could finish the first sentence, Hector sat down in the
chair next to her.

“Ola Chloe. Yo quiero?” he asked her. He was
holding a sealed pack of food from the commissary. He claimed to know which
packets held meat and which were just vegetables. It was always a special treat
to get meat out of one of the M.R.E.’s. He had been teaching her Spanish since
she had come on board a few months ago and she found it interesting. English
was the standardized language for all ships, but Chloe liked having at least
one level to connect with all people on.

“Si. Donde estade los banos?” Chloe said. She
knew she had just asked for the bathroom, but it was her only complete phrase
so far. Hector smiled and giggled. His voice had a silvery tone to it that made
Chloe smile. There would always be room in her heart for Hector, duty-mate or
not.

“Is that the newest one?” Hector asked. He
dropped the M.R.E. into her lap and opened his own. He tore open the top and
pulled the fork off the side. He glanced in and inhaled deeply. “Jackpot!
Hamburger and gravy.” He said. Chloe’s stomach yearned at the thought of the
most coveted of all M.R.E.’s. She was most likely stuck with protein added
beets or something of the kind.

“Yeah, this is the newest in the series. Have
you started the first one I let you borrow?” Chloe asked, replacing her
bookmark. She tore open the top of her M.R.E. and looked down inside. It was
cubed chicken with lemon sauce. All of the meat they ate was synthetic, but the
hamburger was the only one that tasted like the original stuff. The chicken
always tasted too sweet like the worst possible dessert you could imagine.
Hector chewed on the hamburger, savoring it like it was his last meal and
nodded.

“Yeah, I just can’t get into it. When does it
get interesting?” he asked. He forked another wad of meat-like substance into
his mouth.

“Book two. Just finish the first one and I
promise you, you’ll enjoy the second.” Hector smiled and Chloe noticed there
was a spot of gravy on the corner of his mouth. She reached up, dabbed the spot
and then licked her finger. She savored the flavor of the gravy for a moment,
probably far more than she should have.

“I have a whole mouth full where that came from,”
Hector said, showing the chewed portion of the hamburger. Chloe wrinkled her
nose and swatted at him. The intercom bonged and everyone looked up to the
ceiling mounted speaker.

“Attention: all crew members report to stations,
repeat, all crew members report to stations.” Chloe cocked a look at Hector who
just lowered his eyes and nodded. Tanya and Mosquito Jim stopped what they were
doing. In a stark reversal, the common area emptied and everyone went to
stations. As Hector and Chloe got onto the incoming conveyer belt, the four
genny rooms filled up. Delores Carter was on duty in room three, the room Chloe
had been in. She came tearing out of there.

“Hector, Chloe, take room three! I’ve got to go
up to the deck.” Delores rushed off in a typical Delores rush. She was
generator room supervisor and most times just a Jack-of-All-Trades. Hector and
Chloe went into room three and sat down. Of all the emergency positions,
generator observers were probably least on the list, but protocol was protocol.

“What do you think is going on?” Chloe asked.
She had left her book in the common area and that was okay because aside from
Tanya, Hector was her best friend on the Bull.

“Fleet is fueling up. Has to be.”

“Why would the fleet be fueling up all at once?”
But even as her mind closed around the question, the answer slipped from
Hector’s lips.

“Jellies.” Jellies were, so far, the only other
form of life in the Earth solar system. They lived in the gas giant of Jupiter
and were, by and large, some of the strangest life-forms encountered by humans.
So far as studies had shown, Jellies were of a single intelligence but of
multiple bodies. They could swarm into gigantic bodies that could move through
space. They launched from Jupiter using gravity pulls from the larger moons
orbiting the planet. In single form, they were mostly harmless, but when
amassed, they could be devastating. Now the fleet was either responding to a
threat or was about to create a threat themselves.

“Do you think they’re going to invade Jupiter?”
Chloe asked. Her voice sounded childish and far more scared than it should
have.

“No, most likely the Jellies have been spotted
headed through the asteroid belt towards Mars colony. The fleet is either
responding to that or is perhaps getting ready for an attack. We can’t land on
a gas giant and really, so long as the Jellies stay there, we have no reason to
do anything to them.”

“But I heard they had attacked the miners in the
asteroid belt?” Chloe asked.

“Well, what we consider an attack, they might
only consider a probe. The report I heard said that the Jellies had eaten
through the hulls of two or three ships and had killed about a dozen miners. If
they were just trying to analyze us but didn’t know the harm they had on us,
then we can expect they aren’t hostile. But if they are truly just one
intelligence, then what’s to say that they don’t consider us a foreign presence
in their solar system.” Chloe nodded. She had heard both these arguments
and a dozen others. Some people wanted to contact the Jellies and some wanted
to kill them and others wanted to just remain oblivious to them.

Some believed that the way the Jellies traveled
through space was enough of a reason to believe in their subversive and hostile
nature. Pulling off from a massive clump of the primary being and hurdled
through space as a chunk of what appears to be ice. Some even wondered if all
comets themselves might be nothing more than massive frozen jellies just
waiting to hit a planet and take up residence. These beliefs were first begun
around the time that Hale-Bop crashed into Jupiter and returned one body of
Jellies to the primary.

The feeling of worry that was present in her
heart must have shown on her face. Hector put his hand over hers on the small
table. Chloe nearly said something to him then, but the door to room three
opened and in stepped Delores.

“Okay, I have to give this speech twice more, so
listen up: The fleet is mounting and all Dockships are set at full capacity. We
don’t know when we’ll finish but we have to be ready to refuel the entire fleet
if need be. You will not be taken off shift until this is over. Understood?”
Both Hector and Chloe nodded. Hector spoke up for both of them then.

“Delores, where is the fleet going?” Delores
shook her head and looked away.

“They aren’t going anywhere. The fleet is
getting primed for defense, not attack.” Delores turned and walked from room
three. Chloe knew that had Hector not been there, the same information wouldn’t
have been passed on.

“So are we being invaded?” Hector shook his
head.

“No, just because they are poised to defend
doesn’t mean the Jellies are invading. There might be a large Jelly just now
heading our way that they want to get a heads up on.” Hector was lying and
Chloe knew it. The entire fleet wouldn’t be called in to handle one large
Jelly. Chloe scooted her chair over the wall terminal. “What are you doing?”
Hector asked.

“I can monitor the ship from here.” Before
Hector could respond, Chloe had brought up the ships external monitoring
cameras. Every station had access to these for similar reasons. The crew had to
monitor the load and be prepared for how much production was required.

The screen showed the external hull of the Bull.
The Bull itself was a horseshoe shape with hoses on one side of the horseshoe
and the fuel cells themselves in between the two bars of the ‘u’. The first
external camera showed the generator side of the horseshoe. Arrayed on the
generator side were no less than a dozen Raptor class ships. Chloe pecked at a
few keys and brought up the fueling side of the horseshoe. Chloe gasped and
thought that perhaps Hector had as well. On the fueling side, there were four
Raptor class ships being fueled and another two dozen waiting in line. The
Sitting Bull was one of four Dockships and was often the least used. This meant
that the other four ships must be seeing two or three times the number of
ships. To see this number of ships who were just going to hang around Earth
orbit for defense meant something had happened and that something was possibly
the worst thing that anyone could have predicted.

“Zoom the cameras on fuel side to as far as they
can see,” Hector said. Chloe punched in the command and watched as fuel side
zoomed for a minute or more. These cameras were equipped to be very sensitive
as they were often used to guide ships into dock with the Bull. In the vastness
of space, things were not still.

Eclipsing binaries often wink and occasionally
meteors strike planets and sometimes a supernova is visible from a weak lens
like the camera, but what Hector and Chloe were looking at was something beyond
such an idea as even the most unusual space movement. Clusters upon clusters of
Jellies were streaking through the short space between Mars colony and Earth at
tremendous speed. Chloe punched in the zoom command again, but the terminal
signaled an error. She had expected such, but she had to try. Chloe moved the
cursor over one of the objects and selected it. Chloe input the command to
estimate object size. This was often important for determining if it was a
Raptor class ship from afar or a very close Mosquito. The computer returned an
estimate that the biggest of the objects was roughly twice the size of a
Mosquito. Chloe calculated their distance and rate of travel. The computer popped
up another error on speed of travel and distances both.

“Three minutes, maybe less.” Chloe’s head felt
light. “Let’s get these four greased up now Chloe.” Chloe nodded and they both
descended to the floor. Chloe ran to Old Chuck and popped the hose in with
practiced grace. Hector had started on the other end and was making his way
down the line. There were four hoses and all gennies could be pumped at the
same time. When they were finished and the hoses were back in place, Hector and
Chloe returned to the G.O.D.

Hector walked to a wall plate and pulled open a
door that Chloe hadn’t known was there until that moment. From the hidden
locker, he pulled two belts and a cutting torch.

“What are those for?” Chloe asked.

“These,” Hector said holding up the belts, “are
precautionary. And this,” he said regarding the torch, “is mandatory.”

“Mandatory?” Chloe asked, hitching a belt to her
waist.

“Don’t ask,” Hector said, finishing the
tightening of his own. He walked to the railing closest to the terminal and
hitched his belt to it. Chloe walked over and hitched her own next to his.
There was a four foot lead on each belt and an emergency release. Hector
reached over and punched up a screen that, like the locker, Chloe had never
seen before. On the screen were four green squares and a number in each square.
Chloe opened her mouth to ask a question but Hector put his finger to his lips.
He looked up and around, straining to hear something. Chloe did the same. For a
very long ten seconds, there was nothing. Then, a sound, brief and muffled,
came from somewhere near the common area. It sounded like a meteor striking the
hull, but far less solid. It sounded solid from the onset, but then muffled
itself.

Another sound, just like it, but larger came
from somewhere near the barracks. Then, the sound of weapons fire began to
filter into the generator room. Chloe felt her heart pounding. It was a capitol
offense to fire weapons that near a Dockship, but Chloe knew they wouldn’t have
done it unless it was necessary.

There were more sounds then. The sounds of
firing and the muffled hits increased. A cacophony of hits resounded across the
ship. The firing increased outside and a few of the hits rang far too close to
the Dockship for Chloe’s liking.

“What’s happening?” Chloe yelled above the din.
To answer her question, something struck engine room three. For a split second,
the pressure changed and Chloe felt the vacuum of space. Then the vacuum
stopped and the room was back to echoing the sounds of the battle ensuing
outside. Chloe scanned the dark metal walls for any signs of damage. She was
sure they had been hit, but where, she couldn’t be sure. Hector flipped on a
pen light at the end of his torch. He ran the small circle of light over the
walls of the generator room. As he came to the corner between the hull wall and
the wall between rooms three and four, Chloe felt her heart skip.

Extending three or four feet into the room from
the hull wall was a tendril of a Jelly. It appeared to Chloe as nothing more
than a lengthy section of primordial ooze that was somehow grotesquely erect in
the gravity of the ship.

“It’s just a piece. It’s sealing off the hole in
the hull. Brace yourself, I’m gonna toast it.” Hector whispered this as though
the Jelly could hear him and then, Chloe understood that it could hear
him. The tendril regarded him with an unsteady attention.

Hector sparked the oxygen burner on the end of
the torch. He adjusted the gas levels and then arched a stream of nearly pure
acetylene. The flame struck the Jelly with a hiss. The Jelly recoiled and began
to spread itself against the wall. Hector followed its progress with the torch,
evaporating the remnants of the Jelly. After a few moments, the Jelly was
reduced to the hole it had come in on. Hector let off on the throttle of the torch
and looked at Chloe.

“We’re going to need a meteor patch!” He yelled.
It wasn’t until he let off on the torch that Chloe noticed the noises had
gotten louder. It was mostly torpedoes that were being fired now and Chloe
could hear their cataclysmic explosions far too close to the Bull. Chloe didn’t
need to be told that the big Jellies were here now and the Raptor ships were
fending them off.

Chloe reached beneath the terminal and found a
dusty box full of magnet patches. They were nothing but a piece of low grade
aluminum with a magnetic place holder welded to one side. The magnet was placed
over the hole and the aluminum was melted into it. They were temporary at best
and Chloe knew that they might need the whole box. She put the box on the table
and unhooked her latching to the rail.

She slid down the ladder and walked over to the
wall where they had been roasting the Jelly. She could see that part of it was
beginning to melt and soon enough, another piece of tendril was sure to be
stretching its way into the generator room. The hole was just above her head on
the wall behind and to the left of Old Chuck. Chloe slapped the large metal
plate as best she could over the small hole that the Jelly had punched into the
skin of the ship. She stood back and Hector moved up to melt the patch in
place. He readjusted the levels of oxygen in the torch and got it back to a
nice blue flame. He brazed the hole and within no time, there was no trace of
the Jelly.

Chloe was headed back to the ladder when an
explosion rocked the genny room. She went sprawling across the floor towards
the ladder. Chloe looked back just in time to see Hector land torch first into
the Molybdenum tank. The grease was pressurized and within seconds, the floor
was coated in the lube. Chloe tried to stand and found that the floor was far
too slippery to stand on. Instead, she crawled to the ladder, Hector close
behind her. It was a struggle to hold onto the ladder and after a few close
misses, she found that hugging the ladder all the way up was the only way to do
it.

Once she and Hector were back on the G.O.D.,
Hector was at the terminal, staring at the four green squares. They were still
green and Chloe didn’t need an engineering degree to guess that was a good
thing. Chloe looked at the generator floor and saw the mess of black grease
still sliding and running everywhere. The tank that Hector had punctured was
now empty and that was both a good and a very bad thing. There were only two
tanks and he had hit the larger of the two.

A small beep emanated from the terminal and the
both of them glanced over at it. Square one was red and flashing. From room
four, Chloe heard another sound she had never heard from the beginning of her
time aboard the Bull. It sounded like an airlock depressurizing. Chloe knew
that such a thing wasn’t possible in a generator room, but that was what it had
sounded like. Hector grabbed the lead on her belt and tightened it. Before
Chloe could ask, Hector punched a function key. Square one went out. A single
click from generator one then an airlock did open; just beneath it. Dora
the generator fell a good distance from the ship before she exploded. The
airlock had opened and closed so fast that only a dip in pressure coupled with
the presence of the vacuum could be felt. Chloe felt a sense that perhaps there
was some kind of preparation that had been made for this attack and that she,
and most likely at least half of the other observers, hadn’t been briefed.

“So, was Dora rigged to blow or was that just
preparedness for such times as these?” Hector bit his lip and turned from
Chloe’s query. The screen still showed all green, but Chloe continued to hear
the airlock sound from elsewhere in the Dockship.

“You know the new guy?” Hector asked.

“Wilson? Yeah?”

“He’s Intelligence,” Hector said, still averting
his eyes.

“Intelligence? On a Dockship? And how would you
know?” Chloe could only think of two ways that Hector might know something like
that. Either he had been briefed before Wilson’s arrival or…

“I’m his supervisor.” Chloe nodded as though
this was just one more thing to add to an ever worsening day. Another question
was poised on her lips and again, something interrupted it. This time, Jimbo
the genny, signaled his time to go. Hector hit the function key and number two
dropped out of the generator room. With Jimbo went the majority of the grease. So
how did we know about the attacks? Chloe thought.

“Intelligence has known the Jellies were hostile
since they consumed the miners. It seems they can process and thrive on carbon
based life forms.”

Are you telepathic? Chloe thought, her
mouth a wide ‘o’ of shock.

“Yes.” It was perhaps the simplest answer to the
most complex question she had ever posed to Hector. A torrent of thoughts
rushed through her mind then revolving around a single theme of how much she
had thought about Hector and how much he had been able to pick up on. “Can you
not do that? It’s noisy enough in here as it is.” Chloe knew some of the
Intelligence agents were telepaths, but she had never met one.

“So what do the Jelly’s want?” She asked. She
knew she could have simply thought her question, but the idea of someone
actively listening to her thoughts made her queasy.

“So far as we can tell, they want two things:
plasma and Earth.”
“Oh so long as it’s just those two things.” Chloe said. She
hadn’t intended on being so biting, but the idea of these things living on
Earth made her want to puke.

“They can’t live on Earth, don’t worry about
that. They think they can and that’s what’s making them dangerous now.
They think so long as they can get down there that everything will be fine, but
the truth is that we have a few things that disagree with them. Sodium for one
is very bad for them.” Chloe nodded. She knew Hector didn’t have to tell her
any of this and for the trust he was showing her, she was grateful.

“So then, they’re coming for the Dockships
aren’t they?” Hector nodded, keeping his eyes on the screen. Another red square
flashed and this time, before the beep sounded, Hector jettisoned Jenny the
genny.

“Are they inside the generators?” She asked,
suddenly feeling more than a little frightened.

“No, the gennies are bait. The fleet is draining
the gennies dry and then we’re jettisoning them. The gennies have been loaded,
over the course of several weeks, with some goodies for the Jellies.” Chloe
nodded. That left Old Chuck sitting on the far side of the room. It was
unlikely that they’d have any more small chunks of Jelly puncturing the hull.
Usually the small chunks were just debris that traveled around the larger.
Chloe had even heard that the small chunks couldn’t think like the larger ones.

“You want to say goodbye to Old Chuck? He’s
probably almost done and I think everything is settling back down out there. We
expected more, honestly, but I don’t think this is the only wave we’ll see this
week.” Chloe looked out to Old Chuck. He stood there, stolid and sober. His
blades would stop for good tonight and with them, Chloe’s time aboard the Bull.
There’s little place for a generator observer without a generator to observe.
It seemed too fast and far too sudden. Chloe had another five months of duty
before she would be allowed to progress and most likely, she’d just be assigned
a desk job on Moon Colony or Mars Colony. It didn’t matter. None of what had
happened since the beginning of her duty on this ship had. She had watched over
pieces of machinery that were nothing more than large bombs that were probably
now floating in a stream behind the Bull. It seemed too empty somehow. The
scope of what had happened.

A peaceful warm feeling entered her then, not
quite like a thought, but more like a suggestion of the peace it carried.

“You’re about to take away the memory of this
aren’t you?” Hector nodded. It wasn’t a big deal, really, and she might just be
better off never having seen what she saw on this duty. “I guess then this is
goodbye Hector,” Adios me amo, Chloe thought. Hector smiled his warm
silver smile and closed his eyes. Chloe felt the world slip away then and, like
Old Chuck, her memories and conscious thoughts of the Sitting Bull were gone.
People, memories and threats come and go, but the duty goes on.